Buying Stars
by timescratch
Summary: You'd never given much thought to the sky. To you, the sky was always just something that existed. It never held much meaning, it never held any life. But to Jade Harley, the sky was everything. AU
1. Chapter 1

You'd never given much thought to the sky. To you, the sky was always just something that existed. It never held much meaning, it never held any life.

But to Jade Harley, the sky was everything.

You remember the first time you met her, the giggly girl with hair too long for your liking and glasses that had been out of style since her grandparents were your age. She had always been just another face to you. She was just another face that you assumed would never mean anything to you.

It's a particularly average day in fall when you meet her. The sky is that neutral shade where it's not quite bright enough to be white, but not quite dull enough to be grey. It's the kind of day that paints your chest with an unexplainable sadness and makes time seem to slow down and fold in on itself. You're sitting in a patch of grass unbothered by others just in front of the school, pulling your headphones on, and immersing yourself in a world colored by tricky beats and smooth rhymes.

"Do you mind if I sit here with you?" You don't hear the voice so much as see a pair of lips mouthing the words. A girl you've only ever seen in passing is looming over you, all suntanned skin and rose colored cheeks, and you find yourself at a loss for words.

She's looking at you expectantly with a pair of eyes colored the brightest shade of green you'd ever seen, and you realize she's waiting for an answer, so you slip your headphones around your neck and give her what you hope is a nonchalant nod. She grins in response and you notice that she hasn't quite grown into her teeth yet, but you find yourself thinking that a smile like that suits her all the same.

She lies down flat on her back next to you with a contented sigh and you find yourself stealing a glance at her from behind your shades. There's no denying that she's very attractive with her wide green eyes and legs that seem endless, and all you can ask yourself is why a girl like her decided to come up to a boy like you.

You weren't exactly liked by many people-and by many, you mean none. Everyone was always scared of you growing up, but looking back on it you can't really blame them. In elementary you'd been bullied a lot for the prominent red of your eyes and the accent you had carried with you from Texas to California. You decided that it was better to hide your emotions and keep a guard up at all times than to show anyone just how vulnerable you actually were.

You're 13 years old now, picking fights every week and sitting alone at lunch because nobody wants to talk to the scrawny pale boy with the freaky red eyes who'd pinned their best friend to the pavement the week before. It doesn't hurt as much as it did when you were younger, but you'd be lying if you said you didn't feel lonely sometimes.

And now there's a girl lying in the grass by your feet who doesn't look scared of you at all and there's an odd feeling pooling deep inside your chest.

"What made you decide to come and sit next to me?" You ask her, inwardly flinching at the lazy drawl of your accent. She turns her head towards you, blinking once, and licking her lips before speaking.

"This is the best spot to look up at the sky from." She says softly and you can't help but notice the way her lips twitch up even more.

"What's so special about the sky?" You ask, and you don't even bothering to keep the mocking tone out of your voice and the snarky smirk off of your face because you really weren't expecting her answer to sound so juvenile. When people actually do approach you, it's usually because they want to start a fight or because one of their friends dared them to go see if the legendary Dave Strider actually lives up to the rumors.

She turns her face away from you once again and looks at the sky once more, wearing a look on her face that you'd never seen on anyone before. The expression on her face makes your breath catch and your chest throb, and you don't know why you're feeling this way, but it scares you.

"The sky's always changing, but it's still always there for me. I can never grow bored of it because there's always something new about it, and it can never grow bored of me, either. So many people have come and gone in my life, but the sky's always been there no matter what." The words come so easily to her that you can't help but wonder if you're not the first person she's told this to.

You don't have time to dwell on that thought very long, though, before you feel warm fingers tugging at yours gently, and you realize that she's pulling you down to lie next to her.

"Why don't you try looking at the sky, too?" She asks and you think it sounds like a really dumb idea, but you find yourself resting your palms behind your head and squinting up at the sky anyways.

"Not much to look at." You remark, and you're not even saying it to keep up your cool kid act. The sky is dull and neutral, black clouds forming web-like patterns around the edges, doing everything they can to block out the sunlight just barely peeking out underneath. You can't even begin to understand why the girl next to you is wearing such a fascinated expression.

"Maybe not right now," She agrees. "But soon the clouds will start forming new patterns, and the sun will start to set, and then the sky will be filled with different colors. Then it will be nighttime and the stars will start to come out." You notice the way her voice changes when she begins to talk about the stars, telling you about all her favorite constellations and how she especially likes it when there's a crescent moon. You soon find yourself holding on to every word she says because her voice is lit up with wonder and her eyes are crinkling around the edges with how hard she's grinning.

"Hey," She says suddenly, turning her face towards yours once more. You briefly notice that she's got a few freckles splashed along her nose and cheeks like you do. "I just realized that I don't even know your name yet."

"'m Dave Strider." You tell her lazily and her grin grows impossibly wider. You're not sure if she's grinning harder because she's heard of you before or if she's just happy to meet you. You really hope it's the latter, though.

"I'm Jade Harley." She responds. You think her name fits her perfectly, but you decide not to say anything.

"So, Harley," You prompt instead, and you don't miss the way her eyes soften whenever you say her name. "What's got you so interested in the sky?"

She turns her attention back to the grey and black canvas above you, a look that's neither sad nor happy crossing her face. She takes in a deep breath and when she smiles it feels broken and out of place.

"My parents live in the sky." She says softly, and you don't even hesitate before you're responding to her.

"So do mine."

Those are the last words exchanged between the two of you before an old station wagon pulls up. The next thing you know, she's on her feet giving you a small salute and you raise your hand lazily in response as she slides into the car.

Your name is Dave Strider, you're 13 years old, and you have just made your first friend.


	2. Chapter 2

The first year you spend with Jade Harley is the best year of your life.

Your lunch table is never empty because Jade is there and she introduces you to John and Rose.

John sits next to Jade in her Algebra class and the first time you meet him all he does is ramble on about shitty movies ("'C'mon, Dave! Ghostbusters is a _classic_!") and make awful jokes that make you want to cringe. But he's good company so you put up with all of his lame jokes anyways.

Jade meets Rose in the library one afternoon and how they even became friends in the first place is beyond you. Rose is just really fucking pretentious, carrying around huge psychology books and wearing skirts that brush her ankles, but she can keep up with all of your snarky comments and hold a pretty good conversation, so the two of you eventually grow close.

You start spending your afternoons over at Jade's house when school lets out and you don't think you'll ever forget the first time you meet her grandpa.

Jade's house is completely different from what you were expecting. There are rifles all over the place, tacky sun-bleached photos hanging on nearly every wall, and a huge globe with multi-colored sticky notes attached to it resting in the center of the living room. But you're not one to talk considering you have a fridge filled to the brim with shitty katanas.

Jade finds her grandpa sitting on the couch, polishing one of the many guns lying around the house, and introduces you to him. He's wearing some ridiculous outfit that looks like something somebody out of a cliché explorer movie would wear and he extends his hand to you with a grin.

He tells you that he's so glad Jade met you.

He tells you that you seem like such a nice kid.

He's telling you things adults never tell you and you feel like not a single person on earth could be happier than you at that moment because for the first time in your life, you've finally done something _right._

Jade leaves the room to go put her school things in her room and the look on her grandpa's face grows serious.

"Look out for her, would you?" He asks you. He manages to look you directly in the eyes through your shades and that terrifies you.

"Sure." You shrug and try to keep your voice even. His eyebrows draw together and you think his gaze could burn a hole through you.

"I mean it, Dave. I've just been so worried about her lately." He murmurs, keeping his voice quiet in case Jade comes back. And you're so confused because Jade is so happy and why would he need to worry about her?

You never get the chance to ask him that because Jade comes bounding down the stairs and pulls you outside with a cheerful laugh.

On the last day of school John invites all of you over to his house and you stay up until 1 in the morning, marathoning laughably horrible 80's romcoms and getting way too competitive over video games. You end up crashing on the couch with Rose and Jade huddled together on the floor, and John goes up to his bedroom.

You wake up somewhere around 4 in the morning because you have to go to the bathroom and you think you see a silhouette perched in front of the living room window. You blink the sleep away from your eyes and the silhouette takes the form of Jade Harley.

Something in your chest aches at this revelation and you're not exactly sure why.

"Harley?" You ask and your accent sounds thicker than usual, groggy with sleep. She turns towards you with wide eyes and your breath catches at the way her hair looks like it's being bathed by starlight. "What are you doing?"

And just like that her attention is drawn back to the pool of inky black and pale silver in front of her.

"Couldn't sleep," She responds simply. You don't miss the melancholic air that falls between you.

You get up and pad across the hall to the bathroom without saying another word.

You don't look towards Jade on your way back.

For the first time in your life, you don't spend your summer alone.

You go swimming with John, Rose, and Jade and get sunburnt so badly that Jade visits your apartment every day for a week to rub aloe vera lotion on your back. She spends the day eating 99 cent ramen and watching cartoons with you since you can't go outside.

You wake up early and ride your bike to Jade's house so that the two of you can watch the sunrise together from her roof. It's the first time you've ever seen a sunrise and the pale pinks and burnt oranges making their journey up the horizon leaves you in an absolute trance. You make a note to do this again sometime so you can bring your camera with you.

You all spend the 4th of July at John's house, chasing each other with sparklers that match the stars, and painting the sky with fireworks. You can't hold back a grin when Jade starts pointing up at the fireworks excitedly, eyes wide and teeth resting on her lower lip, and Rose raises an eyebrow at you. You shrug in response.

On one of the last days of summer, when the air seems colder and the crickets quiet down because the buzz of excitement has left the air, you find yourself running up a flight of stairs with Jade in tow.

"Where are we going?" She asks curiously and you just smirk even though she can't see it.

"Patience, Harley. Damn," You tell her mockingly and break out into a full-fledged grin when she just sighs loudly. You push open the old door to the roof of your apartment complex easily, lock rusted off long ago.

"Dave," She breathes once she takes her first step onto the roof. You watch as she immediately turns her eyes upwards and seems to float across the cracked concrete like the sky's a magnet pulling her in. "I've never been this close to the sky before. Do you think I could touch the stars from here?"

"You could try." You shrug and fold your arms across your chest. You know that she can't and you know that she knows that she can't, but you can't bring yourself to tell her that. She reaches out a hand almost reverently and her smile falters in just the slightest when her fingertips only manage brush the air. But just like that it's slipping right back into place.

"Thank you, Dave." She tells you quietly. "This is really great." You smile at her fondly and make your way across the roof to join her at the edge. Her eyes never leave the stars, but you don't even care that she's not looking at you because you just feel so _happy_.

Your name is Dave Strider, you're 14 years old, and your life feels perfect for the very first time.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Thank you to everyone who's given me feedback on this so far! This is my first time publishing a fic, so I really appreciate everyone who's left me reviews and sent me messages on Tumblr!

* * *

2 years have passed since you met Jade Harley.

Things stop being perfect.

The year you turn 15, Jade stops spending her weekends with you, John, and Rose.

You don't think anything of it the first few times she declines your invitations, saying she needs to catch up on homework or that she already has something planned with her grandpa, but one night Rose and John are busy and Bro's working late, and you don't feel like being alone because you'd been alone for so many years and you never want to go back to that.

Jade said she had to write an essay that night, but you figure that she deserves a break for an hour, so you get on your bike and make your way to her house.

As you navigate your way along well-worn pavement, you catch yourself thinking about how distant Jade's becoming. She's always been a little distant, but you figured that's just because she's a dreamer and she's probably got dozens of other worlds in her head that distract her from time to time. But lately your chats on Pesterchum have become shorter and she goes from being the most talkative person in your group of friends to barely participating in conversations at all.

You think you know the reason why she's becoming so distant.

You just don't want to believe it.

You reach Jade's house within minutes and when you see her in her front yard, gazing up at the stars with that soft smile that you've seen so many times, you stop breathing.

You try to convince yourself that maybe she's just taking a break from her essay or maybe she's already finished it.

But you can't convince yourself of either of those things because you've seen the way she looks at the sky and you've heard the way she talks about it, and it feels like your veins are made of ice because you're just now realizing that Jade Harley cares about the sky more than she cares about you.

No, you're just not now realizing it. You've known it for 2 years.

This is just the first time it actually hits you.

And it hits you really fucking hard.

Jade stopped spending her weekends with you because she's desperately in love with the sky. She's always been in love with the sky, and that hurts you so much, and you can't keep denying it anymore.

You should just go home.

You should just go home and forget about Jade Harley because she doesn't care about you as much as you'd like to think she did.

You shove your hands in your pockets as you make your way over to the girl you should be forgetting about.

You can't bring yourself to say anything about how you know that she's been lying to you.

* * *

"What do you think it's like to be a star?" She asks you and she's peeling her eyes away from the horizon to meet yours. She's got her head on your shoulder and she's looking up at you, and she's so gorgeous it hurts. Your first instinct is to tell her that she's asking the wrong person, because hell if you know, but something in her eyes makes you want to give her an answer anyway.

Now, you've never given much thought to the sky, but you remember being 5 years old once. You remember being 5 years old and clinging onto your brother's neck, watching as he pointed to an endless wave of black, dusted with silver stars and thin clouds, just outside the cracked living room window, telling you that's where your parents were. You asked if they could come home soon because you missed watching your mom bake cookies and your dad still hadn't taught you how to ride a bike yet and he promised he would.

"Nah, little man," Bro had told you with a sad smile. "They can't. But you know what? I bet they're a lot happier where they are now. I bet they're havin' all sorts of rad times, flyin' on the moon and shit."

And you remember feeling so confused and so angry at your brother for saying that because how could your parents be happier living somewhere where they couldn't come visit you and your brother? What's the point in living somewhere where you can never see the people you love, where you can never hug them or reassure them that you love them?

Your answer leaves your lips before you can even think about what you're saying.

"I think it'd be really lonely." You tell Jade. She detaches herself from your shoulder so fast you don't even have the time to process what's happening. The look on her face is one of pure, unadulterated shock. She's acting like you just slapped her across the face and the intensity in her wide eyes has you wondering if maybe you did.

"What are you talking about, Dave?" Her voice is loud and sounds like her normal, cheery tone, but there's something twisted and strained about it, and it scares you because you remember being 13 years old and thinking she was the happiest person on Earth. "Just look at all of the stars! How could being surrounded by so many bright lights be lonely?"

And you've never given much thought to the sky, never dreamed about it the way Jade has, and you really have no right to discuss it with her.

Jade Harley lives for the sky. She breathes sunlight and laughs starlight, and her eyes are colored by the bolt of lightning that signals the arrival of a raging storm. She talks like she's danced across every inch of the galaxy, and you think that if anyone has, it's Jade.

But when you were 5 years old, your parents left for the sky, and it didn't matter how many times people told you that they were in a better place because they loved you and Bro, and there's no way they would ever think that a world filled with strangers could be better than a world with you.

You have no right to discuss this with Jade because the sky is what makes her happier than anything and she doesn't deserve to have that ruined for her.

But you can't stop talking because she's been so distant and you're just so terrified that she's going to abandon you for the sky like your parents did, except it would hurt you even more if she abandoned you because it would be her choice.

"Sure," You say. "You'd be surrounded by other stars, but what if none of the other stars liked you? What if you fell in love with someone on Earth, but couldn't be with them because you're stuck in a different world filled with people who don't accept you, so all you can do is watch them, and hope that they notice you? And what happens if that person never notices you because there's nothing special about you because all you are is just an exact copy of the star next to you? Or what happens if they notice another star because that star is bigger than you, and that star is brighter than you, and all you're left to wonder about is why you didn't get that lucky? Why weren't you lucky enough to be made brighter than the other stars? Why weren't you lucky enough to be liked by the other stars? Why weren't you lucky enough to be loved by the person you loved? Why weren't you lucky enough to be able to let that person know that you exist and that you love them? Why weren't you lucky enough to be made in the same world as them so you could hold them when they cry and let them know that they're perfect because they have it in their head that nobody thinks that about them?"

And you don't know where all these words are coming from, and you don't know why you're talking so fast, and you don't know when you started shaking because you're so scared you can't think straight anymore. All you know is that Jade looks terrified and that you're so tired of talking about the sky.

You're so tired of looking at Jade, while her eyes never stray too far from the sky.

You're so tired of seeing the adoring look in her eyes that's only present when it's focused on the horizon.

You're so tired giving her your most sincere smiles, while she only gives hers to the stars.

Your name is Dave Strider, you're 15 years old, and you're so tired of being in love with a girl who will never notice you because you weren't lucky enough to be the brightest star and she belongs to a world in the sky.


End file.
